


And There They Are

by Elivira



Series: Annie Withburne [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Annie Withburne, Female Character of Color, Gen, POV Character of Color, POV Female Character, POV Outsider, Post-Episode: s04e01 Lazarus Rising, Sam Winchester in an Enigma, Why Did Jess Die?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-22 23:31:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4854767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elivira/pseuds/Elivira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Annie finds the Winchesters, there is a gun pointed at her head and all she can think is that if Dean shoots her, she'll never find out the truth behind Jess's death.</p><p>Annie's search for the truth leads her first encounter with the brothers in five years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And There They Are

Annie doesn't find Sam Winchester for five years and when she does, she has no time to rejoice because his brother has a gun pointed at the center of her forehead. It's her fault really; trying to break into the brother's shared hotel room wasn't the best idea she's ever had

"Who the hell are you?" Maybe it's just because of the gun but Sam's brother is much more intimidating than his mugshot suggests.

"Annie Withburne." She gasps, eyes fixated on the gun, and she thinks she probably looks pretty stupid because the gun is resting against her forehead, she's trying not to move, and looking up at it so hard that her eyes hurt.

She forces herself to look at Dean, who is standing in the doorway of the motel room, and raises her arms placatingly. He looks at her and obviously doesn't recognize the name, she isn't surprised.

"I'm a friend of Sam's," Dean raises a single eyebrow, "from Stanford." She clarifies, and Dean raises the other one. "Jess's best friend." She continues.

"Really?" Dean draws the word out skeptically. The amount of suspicion he manages to put into the one word is mildly impressive.

Annie can't really blame him. From what she knows about his and Sam's childhood and what little she is found about his profession (hunters can be very tightlipped on they want to be) Dean has spent his whole life on guard, chasing after things from most people's nightmares. Not that Annie's she believes the stories of ghosts and demons. But she doesn't believe that the brothers are serial killers.

About two years back she found some books and the first book; girlfriend, Jess dies in a fire and boyfriend, Sam goes hunting monsters with his brother is a big giveaway and if that wasn't enough, book!Sam's friends from Stanford: Rebecca and Zach, St. Louis, and the FBI were. Someone is making money from Sam and Dean Winchester's lives, or at least some twisted version of it. Because those things happened, she knows because she want to talk to Becca, who swore up and down that the brothers had saved her. Other than that though, she is been very tightlipped. Maybe because Annie has always been a 'gotta see it to believe it' type of person and Becca remembers something that Annie won't believe.

She doesn't believe the brothers are murders but looking at Dean now she can tell that he is a dangerous man, even without the gun. The way he holds himself, the look in his eyes, and how his finger twitches on the trigger, tell her that he will blow her brains out if he needs to. She's good at reading people though and can tell that he won't unless he sure she's a danger to him or his brother. She can tell that he hasn't slept in four eight hours and, judging by how he holds himself, he has some kind of abdominal injury, maybe bruised ribs.

"Really. I am. I swear." She says, trying to convey the truth of her words. Dean looks disbelieving but turns his head, gun still held up and yells into the room, where she can see a large form reading a book on the bed.

"Hey Sammy, come'ere there's some black girl here to see you. Says she was Jess's friend!" From behind Dean, Sam sets his book down and stands up, eyes lighting up in recognition as they rest on her. He walks to the door.

"Annie?"

"Hey Sam. Um, do you think you can call your brother off?" Sam seems to know is the gun for the first time and stiffens, looking between the two of them. He nods to Dean, who the gun away, flipping on the safety, and tucking it into the back of his pants.

Annie looks up at Sam and wow, he looks different. Send Winchester has always been large but he has never seemed so. Everyone knew he was tall but he always tryed not to stand out and seem smaller that he really was. He always looked like a typical, it's not taller than average, student. Now though, after five years of driving the lower forty eight doing God knows what, Sam is grown into his height. He has a don't-mess-with-me air about him and it's like she's meeting him for the first time.

She knows with absolute certainty that the Sam in front of her is not the same man that Jess had said let spiders go outside, instead of smashing them, and she wonders if he still does. And now they're looking at her strangely and she thinks she might've said that last part out loud, she does that sometimes when she's nervous, because Dean answers.

"No?" Annie blushes, but she must have passed some kind of test is it both visibly relax

"Annie, what are you doing here?" Sam looks worried.

"Um, It's kind of a long story." It's not like she can say _"Well in the beginning I thought you murdered Jess. Now I don't but I think you know who did. So I've been chasing you around for the better part of five years."_ That probably wouldn't go over well.

"Can I come in?"

"Oh! Yeah." Sam steps back to let her in and Dean follows her into the room.

She carefully steps over the salt line and walks all the way through the devil's trap hastily sketched in the doorway, because even if she doesn't necessarily believe, they do, and she can respect that. She spent the last five years looking for Sam Winchester and is not going to jeopardize the small amount of trust he seems to have placed in her.

"So why are you here?" Dean cuts right to the chase, and motions for her to sit down in the chair by the little desk that pretty much amounts to the mound of furniture in the room. It doesn't look dirty but the whole motel screens uncleanliness and she sits down gingerly earning a small smile from the other Winchester.

"It's a long story, so if you have something to do..." She says and let's the sentence trail off and knows it is a poor stalling tactic because it's almost two in the morning, the brothers don't have anything to do, or they would've been gone like she originally thought.

Sam looks at Dean in a way that Annie is starting to recognize as part of some secret sibling language.

"No, we don't." Sam says, and either he's telling the truth or he's really good at lying. Annie things that both are true.

"Well," Annie has never been one to stutter, but she really has no idea what to tell them. She settles on the truth because that seems like the best idea "So I know this sounds obsessive. And you might not even know, even though I really think that you do. And I really have no idea how to say this because I never actually thought about what to say if actually found you." She notices that she's rambling and takes a calming breath. What the hell is wrong with her? She's never been the kind of girl who has trouble being blunt.

"So I asked around and everyone said that you had left. After that you were in St. Louis, so I called Becca and she said that Dean didn't kill anyone, that you saved her but I wasn't sure; she was definitely hiding something. I wanted to find out who killed Jess, because no matter what the police say, It could've been an accident. At first I thought that you had kill her," Sam winces at this, "but I did some research and your mother died same way. I really just want the son of a bitch who killed her to rot in hell. Dean shorts at this. "But I have a life and you guys are really hard to find."

It all comes on the rush and she thinks this might be the first time she's ever told someone all of it.

Sam stares at her in shock. "You've been looking for is for five years? We aren't that hard to find."

"Yeah. I thought so too. But every time I got close something would happen. The FBI sent you into hiding, I got a bad tip and drive to the wrong side of the country, I finished school and got a job, everyone thinks you're dead, and seven months ago Dean dropped off the face of the earth. Sam you just kind of disappear soon after." She pulls a badge out of her coat pocket and shows it to them.

"Agent Anya M. Withburne." Dean reads and his eyes widen. "Dude your friend's a fed!"

Sam's eyes widen but he smiles. "The FBI? You always did say you would." Annie laughs. "I'm on personal leave right now because about two months ago one of you used an alias that I'm monitoring. You're back from wherever you were and I want answers. You know who killed Jess and I want to haul their ass to jail."

"Yeah we do," Sam says, "but it's dead."

A look of anger flashes across his face and Annie is once more struck by how different Sam is. In school he had never seem dangerous but now there's an air about hi that sends shivers up her spine. She gets the feeling that this Sam could kill her before she she even had a chance to grab for the gun she has holstered under her jacket.

"Who was it?" She tries to keep voice her voice steady, but this is it, this is all she's wanted for five years.

"It.." He trails off.

"An old enemy of our mothers." Dean finishes and she knows that they're lying. It hurts, more than she expected it to, because even though she's been chasing them for years, it's still like it's a like to live in their own world and she thinks of the night four to half years ago when she they live in their own world.

Annie thinks of the knight she came home from an old bar and put down salt mines in a dorm. She takes a chance.

"Was it a demon?"

Sam and Dean's eyes widen.

"Wha-?" Sam starts.

"That's what you guys do right, hunt things?"

"You, know?" Sam looks flabbergasted and Dean looks a little impressed.

"I've never seen any proof. I make a habit of seeing things for myself before I make conclusions, but I've heard enough well lookee you guys to think you might be right."

Dean smiles. "Finally a fed with a clue."

"But how do you know the thing that killed Jess was a demon?" Sam asks.

"I didn't, and without proof that they even exist, I will believe that it was just a man. But you told me just now. Demons were just the first supernatural creature I thought of."

Sam blinks.

* * *

 

Annie stays to talk to them until the sun peeks over horizon, sending fingers of red sprawling across the horizon. It's hard to say goodbye, and not just because Sam is the last connection she has to Jess, the Winchester brothers are acy good company, but her vacation time is over in the day. She leaves Sam with a hug and a smile at Dean and catches the next flight to LA.

She's not done, far from it, she's not going to give up five years of searching on only the word of Sam Winchester. Sam and Dean had tightlipped about Jess's death and Annie knows when to stop and look for answers of elsewhere.

Sam had mentioned a Bobby Singer and a name is more than she's had in a long time.

 _Robert Singer_ , she types into the FBI database, _Sioux Falls, South Dakota._


End file.
